NYC Educator: Gotham Schools Defends High-Stakes Testing

NYC Educator: Gotham Schools Defends High-Stakes Testing:

Gotham Schools Defends High-Stakes Testing

by NYC Educator

Today, Gotham Schools saw fit to run a "principled" defense of standardized testing. As corporations continue to massively profit off of our children, as Pearson makes preposterous, indefensible and humiliating errors, someone at Gotham decided this was a good time to run this piece.

First of all, it's interesting to read the writer's claims:

I have no stake in testing itself, beyond that of a taxpayer and an educator privileged to work with teachers and schools. 

And then there's this:

One of the amazing things I get to do for a living is help schools design performance-based assessments that ask students to do something with what they have learned, not just recall what they’ve learned.  

While that's a qualifier, it's pretty clear to me that this is someone who designs assessments for a living. And last time I looked, tests were assessments. Furthermore, one of the things I keep hearing about Common Core is that it promotes thinking skills beyond mere recall. And it better, since kids taking it this year are largely unprepared for it, and likely to fail in huge numbers. (And let's not even mention how much money there will be in